In the thirty years that Julia Schade has been working professionally with books, the publishing industry has changed almost completely.

Manuscripts are no longer read on paper but on the Kindle, the design of the cover is more important than the right title, and the presence of a book and its author in social networks is even more decisive for its success.

However, one thing has not changed: Despite all the market research, the assessment of which book will lead to success remains uncertain.

That makes things so exciting that the native of Frankfurt says: "If I didn't like going to work three days in thirty years, that was a lot."

Schade has been pursuing this work since July 1, 2004 at Hedderichstraße at S. Fischer Verlag.

Here she is the program manager for entertainment, both fiction and non-fiction.

Around ninety titles a year come out under her responsibility, planned well in advance;

the program for autumn 2023 has just been completed.

At peak times, thirty manuscripts are checked a day on Hedderichstrasse.

What is new in the digitized age of the book industry is, among other things, that the publishers look for the authors of successful titles on the self-publishing sites and then take them into their care.

Of course, Julia Schade has long since ceased to be able to go about her reading matter unbiasedly: "I read way too fast."

Daughter of a photographer from the Holzhausenviertel

Born on May 16, 1958, Schade attended the Lessing-Gymnasium, studied Latin and Greek, and studied art history in Heidelberg, with a focus on the 17th century.

Her dissertation dealt with a church in Siena, which required a three-year stay in Florence.

Because she considered herself more talented for language than for sight, she started - "that was somehow obvious" - with a publishing house.

He specialized in travel books. Schade learned everything there in an analogue way, from image formatting to editing on paper and marketing.

As a non-fiction editor at Verlag Gustav Lübbe in Bergisch-Gladbach, she took care of titles that dealt with human fate and how to deal with it.

The move to Augsburg in 1996 to Weltbild was challenging, the Bavarian race and Schade didn't really go together.

But working there was fun.

Among other things, it consisted of realizing in-house productions of such titles at Weltbild-Verlag, the success of which was usually evident from the sales figures in the catalog after just three days.

Five years in Augsburg were enough, Schade went back to Lübbe, this time as publishing manager, but after three years she gave in to recruiting from Frankfurt.

Her ambition and a certain stubbornness help her to fly the flag of entertainment in the literary publishing house of Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin – the separation between U and E even in publishing only exists in Germany, says Schade regretfully.

Returning to the Main after 26 years did her good.

The woman who likes to cook Italian and French, who enjoys audio books on walks, goes to the cinema, the theater and the opera here.

Above all, however, she remains a wide-awake observer, because as a bookwoman in the entertainment division, she has to take note of life's fullness.

Things remain exciting: in the end, it is always the readers who decide.